But good luck with that

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060718/mideast_lebanon_UN_060716/20060719/

What I can tell you is this: we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both artillery and aerial bombing. The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity.

Look at that last sentence. He is obviously trying to say, without violatating the neutrality of UNTSO, that Hizballah was firing from within meters of his post. Let me repeat, “meters,” and for days at that.

And check out this UNINFIL press release.

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/pr010.pdf

It was also reported that Hezbollah fired from the vicinity of four UN positions at Alma ash Shab, Tibnin, Brashit, and At Tiri.

If you put this together it is pretty obvious that Hizballah is violating the neutrality of the UN positions by intermingling their forces around them. As a result, UN peacekeepers, some of them unarmed like Maj Hess-von Kruedener, are dying for it.

Thank you for the link.

In any case Hizbullah kept telling the world how keen it was to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.

Just because the Hezbollah are keen on prisoner swap does not mean that Israel should acquiesce to it. She retains her sovereign right to exercise other options.

Here is the Hezbollah admitting that they have bitten off more than they can chew with their latest antics:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060726/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_fighting_hezbollah

And why should Israel negotiate with an enemy whose constitution specifically states the destruction of Israel as one of its aims? Negotiations aren’t going to get the Hezbollah to rewrite their constitution. As I recall, Imperial Japan only got their constitution rewritten after being pounded into the ground.

Early on July 12 Hizbullah launched a raid against an army border post, in what was in the best interpretation a foolhardy violation of Israeli sovereignty.

That’s an apologist for the Hezbollah writing if I ever read one.

Given Israel’s worldview that it alone has a right to project power and fear, that might have been expected.

What about the Hezbollah?
What about the “al-Nakba” war of 1948-1949, where Israel was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia?
What about the Yom Kippur War of 1973, where Egypt and Syria attacked Israel?

Deterrence necessarily means a disproportionate response. “You kidnap two soldiers. I kidnap two soldiers. Talks. Prisoner exchange. Repeat. Repeat. Until the end of time.” No, it should not work that way. You come into my territory, kidnap my soldiers, injure others, rain rockets upon my civilians, I pound you into the ground.

Israel just wants to be left alone.

While harsh judgment is levied upon civilian casualties caused by Israel’s hunt for Hezbollah fighters, there is a curious lack of condemnation–and even apologism–for the Hezbollah rockets deliberately aimed at civilian populations.

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” (John F. Kennedy)

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5222.shtml

I’m not serious about giving Israel more countries and land. But I am hoping that someday the world will accept that Jews deserve one country to call their own. As visionary Theodore Herzl put it: “The promised land, where it is all right for us to have hooked noses, black or red beards and bandy legs without being despised for those things alone. Where at last we can live as free men on our own soil and die in peace in our own homeland. Where we, too, can expect honor as a reward for great deeds: where we shall live at peace with all the world, which we have freed through our own freedom enriched by our wealth and made greater by our greatness.”

(Sheree Roth of Palo Alto, “Letters to the Editor,” San Francisco Chronicle, 24 July 2006)

Take a look at a map of the Middle East. Compare the size of Israel with the surrounding Arab countries. I find it hard to believe Israel is the aggressor here. I maintain that Israel possesses her sovereign right to defend herself and her citizens. America would do no different if fractions in Mexico or Canada are launching rockets at cities across USA.

At the beginning of this conflict, all the Hezbollah needed to do was to return the kidnapped soldiers and stop firing rockets into Israel. They didn’t. Now they are crying mommy? I’m sorry, but I am all out of sympathy right now.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Stay well,

Sadly, it’s not the way the world works, and when you think you are right without any doubt, when your philosophy can’t see – or can’t allow – anything different from itself, that is when you are ready to march under your flag, under your religious icons, and commit atrocities in their name.

This has never worked to bring about lasting peace. Maybe that’s not what guys like you want, but it’s what I’d like to see.

Toward that end I think it’s time we tried a different approach.

Again, it is in the Hezbollah constutition to destroy Israel. Surrender is not an option. Neither is a compromise (What? Let them destroy 1/4? 1/2?)

But since you want to talk about relativism, I call bullshit. It is the moral certainty that my side is right, that God is on my side, that you are evil, that makes it possible for me to dehumanize you, to shoot you, to rape your women, to enslave your children. Do you think the Nazis and Imperial Japanese were relativists? They had strong and incontrovertible moral values, and they acted on them.

Moral certainty is a universal concept. It is the conviction that there exist universal values that applue across the board, across cultures, societies, nations, time and space. It is immoral to subject human beings to forced medical experiments. That one should not enslave another human being is another moral certainty. It doesn’t matter if you are a slave under pharaoh, or a slave in Africa today. It is wrong. The same thing goes for raping women, unjustified shooting of people, etc. How you can equate moral values with these abhominal acts is beyond me.

It is disingenuous to portray the Nazis and Imperial Japanese as universalists. Their acts of invasion, annexation, genocide, and torture were certainly not based on universal moral values. Yes, each of them thought they were in the right. Isn’t that the position of relativists? “Oh, he’s right. She’s right. The one over there is also right. We are all right! Group hug!” But neither the Nazis nor the Imperial Japanese were right. They were proven wrong by the force of moral goodness–of a universal belief that countries should be secure from unwarranted aggression from their neighbors; that human beings deserve to be protected against being systematically experimented upon and/or slaughtered. If it is one thing relativists lack, it is moral rectitude.

Where is your defense of an organization (the army) that seeks to master the most horrific and efficient ways of slaughtering human beings?

I don’t intend to. I am pro-military.